Archive for Odd or Cool?

Hamilton Spectator – From bears to bullets
Using the hard-learned lessons of his Project Grizzly experience — a 20-year odyssey that included a National Film Board documentary, an appearance on CNN and personal bankruptcy — he’s ready to start selling his newest idea.

Already, he says, the suit has stood up to bullets from high-powered weapons, including an elephant gun. The suit was empty during the ballistics tests, but he’s more than ready to put it on and face live fire.

“I would do it in an instant,” he said. “Bring it on.”

Yesterday, he returned to Hamilton to show off the suit, hoping to generate some publicity that will get him the meetings he wants with military and police outfitters. [More]

The day when you can buy your own robot exoskeleton (for whatever devious use you have in mind) is getting closer. Tsukuba University engineering professor Yoshiyuki Sankai’s HAL robot suit is pretty close to production — up to 20 of the suits should ship next year, and 400 to 500 in 2008.

The suits, designed for when your puny human muscles can’t get the job done, will cost $42,000 to $59,000 each. But for you apartment movers, the suits are expected to rent for $592 a month. I can’t wait until Wal-Mart is stocking these things, and the Exoskeleton Ultimate Fighting League is finally formed. — Adam Frucci

From Slashdot –Juha-Matti Laurio writes to point out a Washington Times story about
how special this particular Friday the 13th is. The digits in the
numerical notation for the date add up to 13 — whether you write it in
the US or the European form. From the article: “The phenomenon hasn’t
happened in 476 years, said Heinrich Hemme, a physicist at Germany’s
University of Aachen who crunched the numbers to find that the
double-whammy last occurred Jan. 13, 1520.”/. Article

The approximately 20-page book has been dated to the years 800-1000. Trinity College manuscripts expert Bernard Meehan said it was the first discovery of an Irish early medieval document in two centuries.

“This is really a miracle find,” said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland, which has the book stored in refrigeration and facing years of painstaking analysis before being put on public display.

The book was found open to a page describing, in Latin script, Psalm 83, in which God hears complaints of other nations’ attempts to wipe out the name of Israel.

Wallace said several experts spent Tuesday analyzing only that page — the number of letters on each line, lines on each page, size of page — and the book’s binding and cover, which he described as “leather velum, very thick wallet in appearance.”

It could take months of study, he said, just to identify the safest way to pry open the pages without damaging or destroying them. He ruled out the use of X-rays to investigate without moving the pages. [Full article]

Both cool and odd, that it happened to be open at that particular page with the current Israel situation going on.